Monday 3 October 2011 06.00 EDT
First published on Monday 3 October 2011 06.00 EDT

Almost six and a half thousand students are embarking on professional social work courses in England as undergraduates and graduates. As a social work teacher, I'll be meeting the new students for the first time next week.

Few professionals can expect to receive as much hostility, negative stereotyping and media attacks. Social work is also a job, whether we are talking about child sexual abuse or adult abuse, where practitioners encounter and have to deal with far more than their fair share of horror and cruelty. They also face the frequent additional problems of a lack of managerial and political support.

Yet each autumn term, the new intake arrives with enthusiasm, energy and commitment. This at a time when we don't even know whether there will be jobs for them when they graduate. We first met them as candidates for interview, impressing with their desire to help and increasingly experience of the kind of social problems they will work with. Service users greatly value this 'experiential knowledge' as improving social workers' understanding.

There are fears about the future of social work with adults – however much it is valued. The move to personal budgets has resulted in big job losses, with employers turning instead to less skilled, more malleable workers.

The recommendations of the Munro inquiry into child protection social work have big implications for practitioners, but it's as yet unclear how determinedly they will be implemented by government and what the effects will be on the ground. Meanwhile the problems coming to social work's door are increasing. Cuts in public services, welfare reform and attacks on people on benefit are all hitting its clientele especially hard.

Social work is perhaps one of the easiest professions to do badly and one of the most difficult to do well. As I long ago learned, social work and social care are not rocket science. They are far more complex than that! As this next generation embark on their careers, what might be the key things they need and how can they be equipped to be most helpful for their clients-to-be? Over the years as an educator and mental health service user myself, I've developed my own little list, which hopefully will help our future social workers survive and thrive.

• First, know your organization and how to deal with it. Many of the social work scandals that have scapegoated practitioners have been rooted in incompetent and inadequate organisations and hierarchies. You have to get to know how to negotiate these structures effectively. Significantly this is one of the seven professional standards for social workers identified by the social work reform board• Look after your own wellbeing. Social workers can't be sure of getting the supervision and support they need. Make sure you take care of your own physical and mental health. Don't forget your boss is unlikely to find time to visit once you are in hospital. There is now growing recognition of this issue, thanks to the efforts of people like Mike Bush, a former social worker who experienced his own breakdown and now works hard to put practitioners' wellbeing on social work's agenda.

• Remember what service users constantly say. However bad things are, social workers can make a difference – to individuals, families and sometimes communities. Consultation after consultation has found that service users greatly value good social workers. They highlight their importance in their lives and the long lasting beneficial effects they can have.

• Social work is primarily about values and relationships. Service users stress that everything hangs on their relationship with the social worker. From this flows trust, respect, reliability, honesty, being non-judgemental and challenging discrimination which service users especially value in social work. Social work can be concerned with restricting as well as safeguarding service users' rights, but these qualities are equally important in all circumstances. There are strong pressures in local authority social work for 'through-put' and limiting the length of contact with service users. Have confidence that this flies in the face of what we know from service users works.

• Finally don't be alone. Join the union, your professional association and get involved in the new College of Social Work. Build alliances with other professionals, work at strengthening the team you are in. Get their strength around you. Learn from the Social Work Action Network and build links with service users and their organisations. Perhaps most of all, as one experienced practitioner said to me, do not see yourself as different to the service users you work with. If they are 'vulnerable' so are you, and that understanding is your and social work's strength, not weakness.